Steep Hits the Olympics With New Expansion

“Living dangerously?” asked the developer as my skier held his grab to the very last second, barely sticking the landing. Still, the judges at Pyeongchang were impressed, awarding my run with a top score in the Slopestyle competition. One more run like that, and the gold was mine. But in my next run, I got a bit ambitious on my double backflip and landed on my head, the ragdoll physics splaying my poor skier across the snow. The commentators were aghast. The crowd went silent. With such realism, I half-expected an ambulance to wheel onto the snow. I not only ended up knocking my skier out cold, but out of medal contention. Ouch. Such is the duality of going for glory in Steep: in attempts to reach new heights, you’ll either achieve Olympic glory or gloriously fail. In Steep’s latest expansion, Road to the Olympics, the outdoor action sports simulator gets a surprising addition: a story. In the campaign, you get to make your mark as a “legendary” skier or snowboarder at the Pyeongchang Olympics across three freestyle events. But true to the original game, the expansion offers a new set of mountain playgrounds to jump, traverse, and plummet down – plus ten new events to conquer.

Risky Tricks, Risky Game

Game Director Arnaud Ragot described Steep as a “bet” for developer Ubisoft. When Steep launched last year, there didn’t seem to be a great deal of demand for an outdoor action sports open world game. While initial reviews were mostly positive, the developers kept pressing on with new content, and The Road to Olympics aims to be another milestone in the game’s climb towards action sports classic.

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Game Director Arnaud Ragot described Steep as a “bet” for developer Ubisoft.

The expansion is both safer in some ways – the new rails and grinding mechanics are reminiscent of classic titles like Tony Hawk Pro Skater – and even riskier, giving the players a story centered around some of the most obscure and difficult alpine competitions in the world. Instead of limiting the player, Ragot sees the story mode as a way for players to get swept up in the specialness of the Olympics and put your skills towards a singular goal: Olympic glory. In the story, players train and compete in Big Air, Half-Pipe, and Slopestyle while getting training tips and track insights from Olympians.

Olympic Feel, Olympic Challenge

The reverence for the Olympics translates to the gameplay as well. To my mind, I can’t think of a game that has dedicated so many resources to capturing the technical feel of a diverse spectrum of action sports as Steep has. The developers interviewed Olympic greats like Lindsey Vonn and Bode Miller to get a sense of how to translate their high-skill sports into video game form. The result is, the developers hope, a completely different way to play Steep. I lined up in GS suit at the top of a hill and plummeted down. Like in real-life, events like Super G and Downhill are about maintaining speed while trying to thread through the course’s widely-spaced gates. Even with the larger spacing of gates, these courses are exceptionally challenging and my initial playthroughs were full of “DNFs” (Did not finish).

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Like in real-life, events like Super G and Downhill are about maintaining speed while trying to thread through the course’s widely-spaced gates.

To change things up, you can opt for a first-person view, where you’ll get to experience the intensity of hurtling through the air, edging through a hard curve, or blowing through a wall accidentally. That said, I would have liked to see more visual indication when you’ve executed a well-carved turn versus when you’re late on a gate and speed dumping. Slalom is particularly brutal to master and to the developers’ credit, they mostly get the highly technical skiing event right. Instead of maintaining speed and having these large, looping turns, Slalom is all about rhythm. Ragot describes the Slalom courses as “tempo-based” challenges that you’d associate with a music game. While the challenge is fun, I found myself longing for a “bullet-time” mechanic to thread some of the more intricate turning sequences.

Bigger Playgrounds Await

While my initial attempts at Olympic glory left me far short of the podium (and often in traction), I eventually began to understand how Steep: Road to Olympics rewards trick variety and momentum. Having grown up on Tony Hawk Pro Skater, I was accustomed to “living dangerously” and grabbing onto a board for as long as possible while not caring about how much speed I required for the next summit up the half pipe. That doesn’t fly in Steep. While Ragot voiced an appreciation for the Tony Hawk mechanics that the developers and player base have grown up with, Steep’s rails and jumps are more realistic and require different strategies. Once I was able to start linking my rail slides into spins, I began to ascend to the podiums in Slopestyle. My time in the Olympics actually made me appreciate my return to the backcountry more. I found more of an appreciation for the small things that Steep does well: great level design, realistic feel of heavy powder, and lush scenery to explore. Not only does The Road to Olympics expansion offer a new mountain in Pyeongchang, but Japan as well. This is perhaps the most gorgeous playground Steep has created to date, allowing players to shred through cherry blossoms, hop over ghost trees, and test their skill in the Sapporo terrain parks.